Sense of Place: Detroit The Music And Story Of Rodriguez Of Waiting For Sugarman

October 23, 2013 - For our Sense of Place series we are revisiting an interview with the Detroit musician Rodriguez. This interview was recorded in 2009 when Rodriguez's early 70s albums Cold Fact and Coming From Reality were being re-released.

Those records were huge hits in South Africa several years after their initial US release. But Rodriguez, back in Detroit, was totally unaware of his fame until decades later. With the 2012 documentary Searching for Sugarman, the incredible story of Rodriguez was brought to a much wider audience, but here he tells it in his own words and plays live.

His public obscurity sparked an rumors that he had killed himself. Although Rodriguez was alive and well, he had retreated from music, earning a philosophy degree while working as a demolition man.

Searching for Sugar Man is the hit documentary that chronicles the efforts of two fans 25 years later to gather information on their hero and find the poetic folk-rocker doing manual labor and unaware of the profound popularity of his music abroad. In this session of World Cafe, you’ll hear from the producers of his records, the people who found him and the director of the documentary about how it all happened, and from Rodriguez himself.